Trying to Figure This Out

Our reporter on the Wisconsin story and I are trying to piece together the details of breaking news out of Wisconsin this evening. But the gist is that Wisconsin Republicans have seized on a highly questionable work-around to defy the court order halting implementation of the union-busting budget repair bill and put the law into immediate effect. Whether what they’ve done is legally valid is an open question, which will undoubtedly spawn much more litigation. But since they appear to have taken the step of acting in defiance of the state judicial system itself, it raises the question of whether the legality of the move — in the sense we normally understand it, as in ‘does it count’ — even applies. Here’s a piece out earlier this evening from the Journal Sentinel. We’ll have a fuller report shortly.